Neighbourhood Watch

'Grandma you know criminals,' shouted Cleo as she strode through the front door.

Michelle stopped reading but didn't look up from her book. 'And your point would be?' she asked.

'We've got to do a poxy assignment on true crime. We had to read a book about someone who was wrongly imprisoned and then watch a documentary on a killer,' Cleo said as she put the kettle on.

Something Michelle heard rather than saw. She also heard the frustration in her granddaughter's voice and waited for the next bit.

'Urgh, I don't understand people's fascination with that stuff,' she muttered.

There is was, thought Michelle, 'Me either,' she agreed. 'So why don't you do what most people in this state do and speculate on whether the crimes the Burnie's were imprisoned for for the only ones they committed.'

'Well were they?' asked Cleo.

'How would I know?' replied Michelle.

'C'mon nan, you know her, there must be something you can tell me.;

Michelle smiled wryly, 'You know I can't talk about that.'

Cleo snorted, 'Yeah right, like that ever stopped you when it meant something. You know I've heard the story of the night she yelped and ran from you.'

Michelle's smile widened, 'Well it's not everyone who can say they have had a serial killer run away from them. But then as you said, I don't get the fascination. She was hardly the most interesting crim.'

As she listened to Cleo pottering around in the kitchen she sighed and put her book down, supposing her afternooon plan of reading would need to be put on hold. When Cleo got an idea in her head, it was difficult to talk her out of it.

Michelle thought back over the twenty years she had worked as a prison officer, there were certainly plenty of stories, though most fit into one of two categories, those they wouldn't believe or those they wouldn't want to know. She really didn't want to go back down that damn rabbit hole.

Being an officer had been a rough job that had taken a toll that most didn't know about, not that they had cause to as she seldom shared that part of her life. She may have been out of the job for just over five years now but some things never left you. You still know when someone is tweaking, your situational awareness doesn't switch off, and even now she still had an inability or perhaps unwillingness to sit in certain places when she went out to eat. Friends and family didn't question the last, though she was used to those not in the know giving her funny looks.

Perhaps that was the crime she could get Cleo to write about, the mental health toll working in such a job has on those who do it. People had never understood her job, but she'd long ago accustomed herself to that. She was glad to be out of it. Sure it had its moments; good holidays and a flexibilty to enable a good work life balance when she could make it work. It paid the bills and put food on the table, but there were hard times, days it was difficult to leave work at work and she wasn't sure she wanted to go back into those memories.

Once she had dabbled with the idea of writing a book about her time in the job. In the end she hadn't thought people would get it, understand it, because the job had twisted her sense of humour and put a darkness in her that others in the general public wouldn't understand.

Shaking her head to herself she really didn't understand other people's fascination with true crime but then she supposed most people didn't knowingly meet a lot of crims. She's had her fair share of killers, sexual predators and kiddy fiddlers who should just spontaneously stop breathing.

Cleo put a cup under Michelle's nose, forcing her to look up. The scent rising from the mug indicated the girl had made her way to the liquor cabinet. 'Hard coffee?' she asked.

Shrugging Cleo said, 'It's nearly five pm.'

'You think this will make me more willing to talk?'

'I think it will taste good and take the edge off. Mum said this was a bad idea, and I wonder if maybe she was right. I'm sorry for putting it all back in your head.'

Michelle's smile was sad. 'I do have an idea though it's probably a little outside the box.'

Raising her mug, it looked as if Cleo was trying to hide a smile of her own.

Shaking her head Michelle continued, 'I am not going to drop information about killers.'

'So....'

'Well, most of those who end up in prison aren't there for crimes such as murder, there are a large number there because of stupid decisions and too many of those involve men. So I was thinking you could look at real crime but something from the masses. Let me outline a story I was once told and you can decide if that's something you can work with.'

Cleo felt she was going to get something, probably something fun, mum had said that some of the stories Grandma used to come home with were hysterical. She quickly pulled out her phone and hit record. She hadn't wanted to do this assignment but maybe, just maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Michelle wrapped her hands around the warm mug and breathed in deeply. 'I remember one afternoon sitting in the unit yards chatting to one of the crims and she told me this story about the person she only ever refered to as 'the sperm donor', that I couldn't stop laughing over.

'When she was sixteen she started visiting the brother of a friend who was in prison. It had started as a favour to her friend, but the boy was cute and well I assume there was something in the mix about bad boys but that would be my words.

'Anyway she decided he was the one for her.'

'But...' interjected Cleo, 'she was just...'

Nodding Michelle went on, 'I know, that's what I said. She just shrugged and told me she continued to write and visit him. One night he and his mate broke out of prison, not hard because it was a minimum security prison, a farm with a fence to jump over.

'She wasn't home, but it was how her parents found out about him. He went back to jail and she continued to be faithful. In fact she took it to the point where she forged her parents signature to approve her underage wedding to him in prison.'

Cleo choked on her drink.

'Does your mother know you drink coffee?' asked Michelle.

'Yeah, she isn't a fan but she prefers it to all the cans of Mother, don't get sidetracked, keep telling me the story.'

'Just before she walked down the ailse an Officer said to her that is wasn't too late for her to change her mind. She, however, insisted this guy was the one, and she knew what she was doing, after all he had once broken out of prison to be with her.

'A little while later her parents found out what she had done and booted her out of their house. They said she was making the worst decision of her life. Again she wouldn't listen. Instead she found a place and when he got out they moved in together.

'It wasn't long before this guy was in trouble again. He and a mate got high and went to rob a service station. The attendent had a baseball bat and beat them off with it. At the first place, they ended up doing other stupid things and again found themselves back in prison.

'This was were my crim found herself our of lease, nowhere to go - parents wouldn't take her back in, and pregnant. Somehow she ended up lodging in an old lady's house, her and the baby. The old lady then went on a long holiday, leaving the mother and baby there alone.

'This is where it stated to get hilarious. The guy got out, and breeched his bail, on the run he found her and she let him stay with her. So whilst she was hiding a fugitive something odd started to happen. The neighbours, having seen her around and believing her to be a single mother began to ask her to look after their houses whilst they went on their holidays, even giving her their keys.'

'She didn't...' said Cleo.

'She did,' said Michelle with a nod, 'absolutely passed that information on to the guys.'

'How did she end up in prison?' asked Cleo.

Michelle laughed, 'Oh, nothing to do with burgs, she never committed them, just passed on information and said that technically there was no breaking and entering because she had been given the keys. In the end she was got for trafficking huge amounts of heroin. It was the first and only time she'd ever gotten involved in that.'

'And the guy?' asked Cleo.

'Well,' said Michelle, 'like a lot of other women I saw come through our doors, it was their friends and family that got them into trouble. Stupid decisions mixed up with addictions and poor family cycles that normalise prison. Seriously I saw far more stupid crime than anything else. One woman I case managed stole a dogs ashes, and of all the burgs she did that was the only one she regretted. Another woman was insensed that the insurance company wouldn't pay out when her house burnt down...'

Cleo's eyes narrowed, 'Why did the house burn down?'

Michelle started laughing, 'She was cooking meth in her kitchen and blew the house up.'

Cleo laughed, 'You're kidding right?'

'Not even close,' said Michelle. 'So have you decided what to do about your assignment.'

Cleo nodded, 'Yeah I think I have, I'm going to do silly crime stories and you're going to help me, it'll be the start of the book Mum said you were always going to write when you quit but never did.'

FIN